summer heART

greetings, heARTists and heART lovers across the universe! it's the 8th day of the 6th month and time to meet again.

how’s your summer going? ours has been super hot with busy-ness! 

we’re so sorry to disappoint you, but we haven't been able to keep our promise to launch two projects about our favorite Japanese war bride and heARTist, Yuri. 

we had hoped to get our fundraiser started by now, but it looks like it will be more like this fall.

meanwhile, we continue to present our 5 war brides films on Gumroad:

https://watermelonsushi.gumroad.com/

in addition to our upcoming doc, 'Tokyo Lily', we’re also creating a graphic novel about Yuri’s life. it's called 'Lily Wisteria' because Yuriko means lily, and her family mon is represented by the wisteria.

Yuri sells her art at the International District Summer Festival

Yuri with her family

as a conduit for Japanese war brides, we’re often contacted by grandchildren who have discovered the extraordinary lives their grandmothers lived—how they left their homes and families to marry their former enemies, American military men. and, how some of them were disowned, never to see Japan again, while others were physically and emotionally abused by their husbands; and, some even by their husbands’ families. 

just consider arriving in a new country, barely speaking the language, and having to navigate a new living space, often with no one around who looks like you. further, most war bride immigration took place during the 1950’s and Jim Crow. 

the Supreme Court ruling of Loving v. Virginia didn’t occur until 1967. prior to that, some white husbands couldn’t even take their Japanese brides to their home state lest they both be arrested for marrying illegally.

Japanese war brides also raised mixed-race children without books or blogs advising them on how to bring up their kids in a society that they were barely familiar with themselves.

but more often than not, Japanese war brides had satisfactory marriages. some even found immeasurable happiness in their new American homes.

if you’d like to know more about Japanese war brides please visit our Youtube channels and subscribe:

https://www.youtube.com/@warbridesofjapan/videos 

https://www.youtube.com/c/WatermelonSushi/videos 

we also have a new 'War Brides of Japan, a docu*memory' website. it’s not as fancy as the old one, but all the info is there:

www.warbridesofjapan.com

and, to see more of Yuri’s heARTwork, check out her website:

https://lenastarwheels.wixsite.com/iamartistyuriko 

have a happy heART summer. we’ll return when things cool down some.

Yuri’s Fans Forever